How Abortion Bans Put Black Women in the Most Danger

More than half of all Black women across the United States have little to no access to abortions, according to a joint report released Wednesday by two reproductive rights organizations.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than 6.7 million Black women, or 57 percent of Black women between the ages of 15 and 49, have had their abortion access taken away. They live across 26 states—predominantly in the South—that have banned or are likely to ban the medical procedure, according to data collected by the National Partnership for Women & Families, or NPWF, and the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda.

But abortion access is about more than a single reproductive choice. More than 58 percent of the Black women who live in these states are already mothers, and research shows that mothers who are left with no other option than to raise another child face increased economic insecurity that challenges the development of their existing children.

NPWF president Jocelyn Frye told NBC News that Black women in those states are “overwhelmingly” concerned about the ramifications that the bans will have.

“In addition to abortion bans, they’re also concerned about things like economic opportunity and cost of living, racial justice, which are directly tied to the abortion bans,” Frye told the outlet.

Restricted abortion access also exacerbates the Black maternal health crisis. Black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth than any other race due to a lack of access to high-quality maternal health care, fueled by systemic racism and discrimination.

“Part of the history around these issues is that too often the experiences of women of color, specifically Black women, but Latinas, Native women, AAPI women, were ignored,” Regina Davis Moss, president of the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, told NBC. “The assumption was that what works for white women works for everybody.”

“I want us to move away from a ‘they’ mentality and move towards a ‘we,’ because that’s how we’re going to solve these issues,” Davis Moss said.

If you’ve ever wanted to share a cup of steaming Rudy with your favorite second cousin, now you can. Rudy Giuliani—once dubbed “America’s Mayor” and now bankrupt and embroiled in lawsuits—has gone the way of seemingly all right-wing grifters: hocking a personally branded line of coffee.

“I’ve moved at a fast pace, and have had many different roles in life,” a quote attributed to the perennially sued former mayor reads. “But the one constant thing has been a good cup of coffee, which is now proven to have health benefits,” the quote reads—because it wouldn’t be a proper conservative grift without fantastically vague claims of “health benefits.”

Offering three varieties of beans to avoid debtors’ prison—“bold,” decaf, and “morning”—the two-pound bags, all named “Rudy,” with Giuliani’s face prominently displayed, sell for $29.99 a pop. According to Whoxy, a domain-registrar lookup tool, Giuliani’s coffee site was registered March 26, just two days before he told a judge he can’t sell his $3.5 million condo because he needs it for his main grift: podcasting.

Strapped for cash and hoping to percolate some excitement for his desperate new venture, Giuliani is offering the first 100 orders the opportunity to snag an A.I.-designed bag signed by the Mussolini of Manhattan himself.

Conservative figures—not including tax, shipping, or cost of the product and branding—estimate Giuliani would need to sell 4,934,978.33 bags of “Rudy” to square up with the $148 million judgment against him stemming from baseless claims he made against two Georgia poll workers in 2020. That doesn’t include any of his other legal fees or pending civil cases against him. For those, he’ll need a hope and a prayer. Or he’ll start selling Rudy-themed Bibles.

In a press conference Wednesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was caught off-guard by a reporter’s question about police funds being cut in a proposed Republican budget.

“We’ve heard a lot this week about Democrats supporting ‘defund the police.’ The Republican Study Committee budget cuts the main federal grant program that local departments use to hire officers. How is that not proposing to defund the police?” the reporter asked during an event set up for “Police Week.”

Johnson replied that he hadn’t looked into it, but replied that “there’s lots of nuances.” Despite admitting he hadn’t examined the budget closely, he went on to claim that funding for law enforcement increased in other areas.

“That’s a central theme of what we believe. It’s part of our worldview, it’s part of our party platform, and it will always be consistent,”Johnson said, asserting that Democrats were guilty of pushing “defund the police” policies in the past, resulting in higher crime rates today.

It’s telling that Johnson wasn’t able to refute the reporter. The Republican Study Committee’s proposed budget does cut the Community Oriented Policing Services program, which has provided over $20 billion to more than 13,000 different police departments since its creation in the 1990s, something Democrats have not hesitated to point out.

It’s not the first time that the GOP has proposed cutting federal spending on law enforcement; it did the same thing in its debt limit budget bill last year. And ever since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol seeking to overturn the 2020 election results, Republicans have attacked Capitol police as well as federal law enforcement for prosecuting those responsible for the riots that day. Republicans have even missed a deadline to install a plaque in Congress honoring those who defended the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riots, which was supposed to be installed by March 2023.

Democrats still have a tough job ahead to convince voters that they are the better choices when it comes to crime and law enforcement, as, despite lower crime rates, polls show that most Americans rate crime as a very serious issue, and police unions have endorsed Trump.

Donald Trump’s latest fundraising venture is a little atypical for a presidential candidate.

Trump and five of his far-right allies set up shop Tuesday in a room at the New York City courthouse where the real estate mogul is being tried for 34 felony charges related to hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

It was another way for Trump—who owes nearly half a billion dollars in damages in his other legal battles and allegedly stiffed his former employees, including Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars—to save some cash on a filming location. But realistically, the low-budget ad could have been shot practically anywhere, especially considering that the court granted two days off this week from a criminal trial that legally requires Trump’s attendance.

Instead, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, and Eric Trump joined two Republican representatives, all matched and color-coordinated in their blue suits and red ties, attempting to portray Trump as a candidate unjustly locked in the courthouse.

“We’re here in court with President Trump standing with him, but we need you to stand with him too,” said Florida Representative Byron Donalds, incorrectly referring to the GOP nominee as president. “These Democrats are nuts, and they must be defeated.”

“Anything you can give would make a world of difference; we are here fighting the good fight,” said Lara Trump, before Trump slowly shuffled behind the entourage. “They cannot win. We need your help to make America great again.” 

The crowd joins a growing cohort of conservative leaders who have stopped to brown-nose Trump amid his criminal trials. On Tuesday, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott each paid visits, the day after  Senators J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville stopped by.

A majority of Trump’s high-profile attendees have refused to provide direct answers in recent weeks when questioned about whether they’ll accept the November election results. Scott, for his part, refused six times to give his answer on the issue during an interview on Meet the Press. The show of loyalty is a significant rejection of the rule of law in favor of power in Trump’s potential administration—and it’s especially poignant in the face of his first criminal trial.

In a ridiculous, low-budget video published to social media, a Missouri Republican candidate warned voters to not be “weak and gay.”

Valentina Gomez, who is running for secretary of state in Missouri, posted the video of her jogging down an empty suburban street in an ill-fitting ballistic vest.

“In America, you can be anything you want, so don’t be weak and gay,” she said. “Stay fucking hard.”

Gomez, who is 24, previously published a video depicting herself using a flamethrower to burn books, harkening back to book burnings common in Nazi Germany against literature deemed “un-German.”

Gomez’s videos appear to be an attempt to provoke attention for her campaign, where she is facing off against seven other candidates for secretary of state. Missouri has been increasingly hostile toward LGBTQ+ youth, banning some gender-affirming care for minors in 2023. That same year, 43 anti-trans bills were introduced to the state Senate, according to Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent tool kit. Only three of the bills introduced were passed, including a ban on trans youth participating in sports based on their gender identity.

Gomez’s “weak and gay” video has so far racked up over two million views, with many commenters making fun of Gomez for the video. While Gomez is running a patently Christofascist campaign, it’s unclear whether she would make exceptions for people to be either weak or gay—or how her fixation on hating queer people relates to the job duties of secretary of state.